By applying color development after exposure to a silver halide photographic material, an aromatic primary amine developing agent oxidized with a silver halide and a color forming coupler are reacted to form color images.
In this method, the subtractive color process has often been used and, for reproducing blue, green and red colors, color images of yellow, magenta and cyan which respectively are complimentary to the above colors are formed.
Conventional yellow couplers include those using an imide group as a releasing group as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,022,620, 4,057,432, 4,269,936 and 4,404,274, those using a heterocyclic group as a releasing group as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,046,575, 4,326,024, which discclose an improvement in the color forming rate and fastness of color images.
Furthermore, for improving the fastness of color images formed from these yellow couplers, hindered amine type compounds as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,268,593 have been proposed.
However, as compound with the technical progress in magenta color images and cyan color images, less progress has been made in fastness of yellow color images. The fastness thereof remains at lower level than magenta and cyan color images, and an improvement is eagerly sought.
As has been described above, it is desirable in color photography that the fastness of yellow, magenta and cyan color images to light, heat and wet heat are uniformly strong, at identical levels for all three colors. The present inventors have generally sought compounds capable of improving the fastness of the color image of the yellow coupler.
There have been known epoxy compounds as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,239,851 that improve the fastness of cyan color images to heat and wet heat, epoxy compounds as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,657 which are effective to reduce yellow stains resulting from decomposition of magenta couplers. Although U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,657 describes the light and heat fastness of color images obtained from aryloxy-releasing yellow couplers, the effect thereof remains insufficient.
In addition, compounds such as cyclic ether compounds described in JP-A-62-75450 (the term JP-A as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application") are effective to reduce stains resulting from processing with a particular stabilizing solution. Surprisingly, it has now been found that epoxy compounds within the scope of the present invention can remarkably improve the fastness, particularly, light fastness, of the yellow color image used in the present invention.